I’m Michael Voris coming to you from the annual Bringing America Back to Life Symposium in Cleveland, Ohio.

Each year in the second weekend of March, organizers bring in speakers from all over the country and the world to talk about the growing threat to human life and dignity in areas of culture, science, politics and governments.

We at Church Militant pay special attention, as you know, to the threat to not just temporal human life, but also — most importantly — spiritual life.

It’s why we have and continue to concentrate so many of our resources toward unearthing the rot in the Church, and doing this every day, we can tell you the rot and betrayal of the truth goes a lot deeper than almost anyone realizes and happens in a million different ways.

We often talk about things on a macro level — the big picture — but we sometimes talk about things on a micro level, specific examples, and show how each of them relates, or feeds back into the big picture.

Today, a micro example, from the diocese of Lansing, Michigan and the bishop there Earl Boyea. Back in 2014, a sexual assault victim informed Boyea of an assault perpetrated against him by a priest who had gained some notoriety on Ave Maria Radio out of Ann Arbor.

The priest is Fr. Pat Egan and his show on Ave Maria was entitled Fully Alive. Egan is a priest of the archdiocese of Westminster, London, England. He has been in the U.S. for a number of years now. When the victim reported the assault to Boyea in 2014, Boyea did nothing of relevance.

He told the victim, an adult male, who had also been an adult at the time of the assault, that since Egan was not a Lansing priest, he couldn’t do anything, like remove his faculties. However, four years later in 2018, once word got out about Egan, Boyea did then remove his faculties.

In a very untransparent press release, Boyea kept most of what he knew close to his vest, revealing only the barest minimum he could get away with. The relevant part read that Egan “has had his priestly faculties removed due to a credible allegation of inappropriate sexual behavior with an adult male.”

What it does not say, which is what the point is:

One, the assault happened four years earlier.

Two, Boyea knew about it back then.

And three, it was not just “sexual behavior” — it was an assault, a homopredator clerical assault. Those missing details are important because of the implication attached.

Why would Boyea conceal that it was an actual assault — he kept that hidden. Why? Why did Boyea keep hidden that the assault happened four years earlier? Why would Boyea not acknowledge that he had personal knowledge of this four years earlier?

Reading the press statement, it could be easily interpreted to mean that Boyea just became aware of a consensual homosexual relationship involving a priest, and the moment he discovered it, being the strong bishop he is, he immediately stepped in and fixed the matter.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Boyea concealed — deliberately — the most relevant facts to cover for his own inaction.

Egan had an earlier charge against him that Boyea knew about as well. In that case, the diocesan review board, Boyea says, determined that the earlier accusation was not credible.

Again, in a case of covering up and making misleading statements, Boyea failed to acknowledge that on the diocesan review board was none other than Fr. Egan’s religious superior who went to bat for him and got the charge deemed not credible. But Boyea never revealed that little piece of info, either.

This is a small example of why growing numbers of Catholics — increasing every day — are looking at their bishops and saying they simply cannot be trusted — period.

If they aren’t out-and-out lying — like Cardinals Wuerl and Cupich and Tobin and Farrell — then they are parsing their words and publishing deliberately ambiguous statements with the intent to mislead. All the bowing at the altar of transparency and offering incense to the gods of accountability is pure bunk.

It is no longer a case of the credibility of these men being destroyed, but the truth of the Faith. The Church Herself is being damaged by these scoundrels who treat the Church as their own private company, pretending to care about the faithful all the while holding them in contempt.

Church Militant was given an audio recording made at a public gathering where Boyea was confronted about his wrongdoing, and the sarcasm and contempt in his answers is palpable — no remorse, nothing, just sarcasm and lashing out in almost accusatory tones.

These men live in a surreal world where no one is allowed to question them, and they rarely if ever suffer the consequences of their actions — only in the most heinous of cases.

Brother bishops defend them in a kind of suicide pact mentality, ensuring that if one goes down, many others would follow, so they enjoy a kind of mutually assured destruction, careful to keep as much under wraps as possible.

Well, here’s a thought for the bishop and others to chew on. The original assault happened in 2014 — a sexual assault — that’s a crime. The statute of limitations has not run out on that crime.

Boyea knew about the crime and did not report it, quite possibly making him an accessory after the fact, because he knowingly protected a criminal or someone he should have had reason to believe was a criminal.

Likewise, because the 2014 crime was related to the earlier crime, and Boyea knew that the decision of that diocesan board may have been rigged, his knowledge could very well open that case up again.

This is all stuff, of course, for lawyers to look at, and Church Militant has information that the Michigan state attorney general is indeed looking at this case. A few years ago, a bishop in Kansas City, Bp. Finn, was removed for failing to report a case of sexual assault involving a minor male.

In 2014, Bp. Boyea failed to report a case of sexual assault involving an adult male. The statute of limitations had run out on the Kansas case. It has not run out on the Lansing case.

So the obvious question is: Why is Boyea still bishop of Lansing? And, are criminal charges possibly awaiting him?

Is it not OK to sexually assault a child; but it is apparently acceptable for a priest to sexually assault a male adult. The entire mindset of the U.S. bishops has to change, and it has to change now — no more secrets, no more deflections, no more arrogance.